Traditional craftsmanship at the Scheffler family in Sieversdorf
Like most people, I had my first encounters with an organ as a child. In my case, it was the organ in our local church during the nativity play on Christmas Eve. Back then, I wasn't always sure whether I really liked organ music. There were passages that I enjoyed listening to, but also some that I found quite loud and disharmonious as a child.
Now and then I would visit one or another village church, simply because I like the architecture of small, cozy churches. A few years ago I was able to accompany a photo shoot on official business, where we took pictures in Fürstenwalde Cathedral and the pastor at the time gave us a glimpse behind the scenes, including into the organ. I had always assumed that this instrument only consisted of the parts visible from the front, but I realized there that this was a huge mistake.
In the background of the organ there is almost a small village - or a large family - made of many pipes of all sizes, made of wood or metal. And this gave rise to many questions... What is an organ really made of? How do the notes from the keyboard get into and out of the pipes? How do the different pitches come about that give the listener the feeling of having an entire orchestra behind them?
These and many other questions are answered in the Scheffler organ workshop in Sieversdorf. And that's where we went on a late summer afternoon for the Slow Trips workshop "Listening in the Organ Workshop". On this exciting afternoon, the listening wasn't just limited to musical sounds. The three of us girls who took part in the workshop were also literally hanging on the every word of senior boss Christian Scheffler, who imparted an incredible amount of knowledge about organ building to us.
But let's start from the beginning... The Scheffler organ workshop is located in a beautiful brick building on the Sieversdorf estate. Christian Scheffler welcomes us there, proud to share his passion with us. The workshop begins with a tour of the workshop, where trial and error (how do you get a piece of rough wood velvety smooth with a plane) and reflection (is the tone of the longer organ pipe higher or lower than that of the shorter one?) are the order of the day. We learn something about the history of organ building, about well-known organ builders, about working materials - all presented very vividly and captivatingly by Christian Scheffler. In his explanations, he goes from one hundred to a thousand without getting bogged down and you can't help but hang on his every word and absorb every sentence with excitement.
The atmosphere in the workshop is familial, we feel welcome, including by the employees, who also take on some of the work themselves.
Then we go to the workbench that has been prepared for us. There are already small individual parts there that suggest that small wooden pipes will be created in our hands. Under the expert gaze of our personal organ builder, we glue, put together, dry and clean until each of us has a small organ pipe in our hands. As a finishing touch in the truest sense of the word, we each go over the rough edges with sandpaper and perfect our work.
Very proud of our own little works of art, we follow Christian Scheffler a short distance through the village to the village church in Sieversdorf. This is exactly what I like!
After a few short anecdotes about the village church itself, we climb the stairs to the gallery and are allowed to look at the organ there (built in 1891 by Wilhelm Sauer) from the inside and outside and of course listen to it too. It's nice that the theoretical and practical excursion is followed by a musical one at the end.
I believe that I can speak for all three of us when I say that the emergence from the organ and workshop world into reality could have waited even longer…